


Across Dark Spaces

by SSock



Series: Totally Not George Mallory Or Anything [1]
Category: Historical RPF, Literary RPF, Original Work
Genre: Boarding School, Emotional Confusion, I hope, M/M, Romantic Friendship, despite the flippant tags this is totally not crack, fuuuucccckkk I have to think up a title, just thought of that one, look there's another, or even comedy, possibly objectionable period-appropriate opinions, someday I will finish all those other fics, wait did I just use a real tag?, warning for lack of sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-22
Updated: 2020-04-22
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:01:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23779570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SSock/pseuds/SSock
Summary: For some reason I couldn't bring myself to write actual George Mallory RPF, even though I normally have no problem with historical rpf, and I find it completely believable that Mallory would absolutely love the idea that random people thought he was hot enough to write porn about (might not like the actual fic, but would be flattered by the idea). Also there's the added bonus that since they're "original characters" I don't have to worry about historical timelines, the actual layout of Charterhouse, whether people sound like themselves (because dear lord I don't want to try to imitate Mallory's writing style), and whether or not they're OOC. I realize I'm totally selling this here. (And it's not even porn! :( )But anyway that's why this is tagged both orig fic and rpf.Two conversations at Totally Not Charterhouse in about 1910 or 1911.
Relationships: Original Male Character&Original Male Character, Original Male Character/Original Male Character
Series: Totally Not George Mallory Or Anything [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1714528
Kudos: 2





	Across Dark Spaces

**Author's Note:**

> I went super low effort when it came to making up the names. Though after I named Llewelyn I realized I wasn't sure if Robert Graves was actually Welsh, or I just really associated him with Wales for some reason. Then I decided it didn't matter. (He's not. I blame the 60 pages of The White Goddess I managed to make it through before I threw it across the room. I seem to remember an awful lot of Welsh poetry in that.)
> 
> I may be pushing it by giving them both access to phones in rooms where they can talk privately at this point in time. And evidently they're not worried about an operator listening in ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> It's entirely logical for Leigh's default assumption to be that some guy is coming on to him, even though he is occasionally wrong.

He got Leigh on the 'phone in the headmaster’s office at ten o’clock two days later.

“David?” There was a hint of tremor in the voice and David saw before him again the shock in Leigh’s violet eyes as if the two of them were back in Leigh’s sitting room that day.

“Are you all right? Is it safe to talk?”

“Oh - yes - this is the only ‘phone in the school. No one can listen in. And I’m alone and the door’s closed. I’m all right. I’m afraid. I don’t -” understand - want things to change between us - want you to stop talking to me - he didn’t know what to say because he wanted to say all of them at once.

“I started to write you -”

“David -”

“But I thought it would be easier to talk to you -”

“David -”

“But I couldn’t get away and perhaps it’s better that I can’t see your face -”

“Do you hate me?”

“Leigh, I didn’t mean anything by it - or I did, but it isn’t that I’m in love with you - why would I hate you?”

“Because I didn’t want you to - you know it’s happened to me before.”

“I don’t hate you. What could you do that would make me hate you? I wanted to say I was sorry. I only wanted you to know how I felt about you - I couldn’t think how else to explain - I didn’t know the words - I wanted you to know you were beautiful - and other things that I still don’t know how to say. I’m sorry. I didn’t think I couldn’t explain it to you that way either, or that it could hurt you. It isn’t that I’m in love with you.”

There was silence.

“Leigh?”

Quietly, “Then everything can stay the same as it was?” 

“If you’d like it to. I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t -”

“And you still want me to sit to you?”

“Yes. Of course.”

“I just want everything to go on as it was. I don’t want anything to change between us. I want you to come to visit me at school and talk to me for hours about anything, and I want to go to visit you and sit for you and see your new paintings and hear about everyone else and everything they’ve said and done and see the new exhibits if there are any. And I want you to love other people. I don’t want you to be in love with me.”

“Oh, Leigh.”

“I don’t think I can be in love with anyone. I thought I could once, but I’ve lost the capacity. Or maybe I was wrong and I never could. I don’t mind. It doesn’t mean much without - you know - and you know how I hate that -”

“Oh, _Leigh_.”

“I just want to go on being friends with you until we’re both old old men and not even you want to look at me anymore.”

“Oh, Leigh, Leigh, oh, hush,” David wished he had waited to talk to him in person, where he could have put his arm around him - an arm around his shoulders would be all right, wouldn’t it? He didn’t sound like he was crying, but maybe if they had been alone together he would have been. David thought perhaps he needed to, and he would have pulled Leigh’s head down on his shoulder, and let him cry, and - not kissed the tears away, because that would have upset him again, and that was how the whole damn thing had started, wasn’t it? A stupid impulsive kiss. “Nothing has to change. We’ll keep going on being friends no matter what else happens. Come and see me again as soon as you can get away.”

“Next weekend?” Leigh said, hopefully.

Oh hell, David thought. He might have really been in love with Leigh if he hadn’t loved Someone Else - which was another reason to thank God for him - and he’d been promising them both that weekend alone together for the better part of the month. He’d have to make it up to him later. “Of course. Will you let me paint you?”

“Oh yes,” Leigh’s voice was starting to sound like sunlight again. “And it will all be the same?”

“All the same,” David agreed. “And now good night.”

“Good night.”

Leigh replaced the earpiece. He was closer at that moment to being in love with David than he ever was - if David had been there right then and kissed him, he might have kissed back - if David had wanted Leigh to take him, he might have, although even the thought of it made him feel weak and ill ever since the only time he’d done it - anything to let him know the sudden fullness of affection he felt for him - anything to repay him for it, as if anything could. 

“What in _hell_ -”

Someone had started shouting outside. Or no, Leigh thought as he opened the window and leaned out, someone had started _declaiming_. _Tempest_ , possibly? The fragments he could hear sounded half-familiar. “Oh, for heaven’s sake.” It was a student, of course. God knew what he thought he was doing, and at this time of night. At least his taste was good, Leigh supposed. He leaned halfway out of the window, twisting around to spot the performer. There. On the gently sloping roof of the wing to the right of him. Someone was going to have to get him down, damn him. He eyed the wall between them speculatively. The moon was up and nearly full. Practically as bright as day. Easy as going up stairs. He pulled himself out onto the windowsill, found his footing, and began to climb. And then there was nothing but the joy that was beyond joy, because in the night and the climb and the voice above him there was no room to feel but only to be. The voice switched languages. Greek now. The Iliad, though it took him a moment to realize, and then that knowledge (and the thought that someone should work on the boy’s accent, whoever it was), receded into the darkness below and the words became meaningless music that he climbed to, and the meter was the rhythm of his finding the next handhold, the next toehold, the rhythm of the tensing leg and the next spring upward, until he came swinging on to the roof in front of the chanting boy.

“Llewelyn,” he said. “I wondered if it was you. Your pronunciation is appalling. And what are you doing out of bed?” But he was smiling as he said it. It was impossible to be anything but happy up there above the world.

Llewelyn grinned back at him. “How could I sleep or stay inside on a night like this? Look at the moon and all the stars. I had to get out and up as high as I could and it was all made for poetry. Did you climb all the way?”

He couldn’t scold him. It was all made for poetry. “Yes.”

“From the ground?”

“From the head’s office. I had a ‘phone call.”

“Who was it?” Llewelyn said.

The depression of the past two days came back in a rush. “Mind your own business,” he snapped. Llewelyn flinched. “Sorry,” Leigh said, and sat down on the roof. “Did you climb?”

Llewelyn sat down next to him. “No, I came through the window.”

“And I should pack you straight back the same way, I suppose, and punish you for it tomorrow.”

“But you won’t, will you?”

“There’ll have to be some sort of punishment. It wouldn’t be fair otherwise,” he said. “But we can stay up here a while longer.” He looked out over the courtyard and the other school buildings to the hills beyond. “Oh, it is wonderful.”

“Shall I recite some more?” Llewelyn began to rise to his feet.

“No. Sit down.” Leigh grabbed his arm. “If someone else hears you, you _will_ be sent back to bed, and they won’t be happy with me either.”

Llewelyn leaned back against the roof and put his hands behind his head.

“Why the Tempest? Why Homer?” Leigh said after a little while.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Llewelyn said. “I wanted something that would go booming out into the dark spaces. They were the first things that came to mind.”

They sat again in silence. Llewelyn stared up at the stars, wondering if he could see them move or if he would only notice, much later, abruptly, that they had crossed the sky. Leigh looked out across the courtyard with his arms around his knees, beginning to brood again.

“They’re awfully artificial places,” he said, out of the quiet.

“What are?” Llewelyn turned his head to look at him.

“These schools - the boys separated from their families, separated from nature, in rows in the beds in the rows of dormitory rooms, rows at the tables, rows in the pews at chapel, rows in the desks in classrooms, lined up in rows on the playing fields, which are mowed and stripped of their wildness. What in nature is square? What has right angles, that hasn’t been shaped and sanded down by man? And the boys, shaped and sanded down into something stupid and dull.” Llewelyn was watching him, caught up in the words, his eyes glowing. “And the masters,” Leigh went on. “Always trying to smother thought, to beat obedience into the boys, because that’s how they’ve always taught - the boys, always trying to get around the masters because they can’t make them listen - both always at war with each other, and neither can think of any other way.”

“I’ve never felt you were at war with us,” Llewelyn said.

“I don’t want to be.”

“Sometimes you treat us more like friends.”

“I’d like to be your friend,” Leigh said. “I’d like to work with you, not against you. I’d like to teach as if we were climbing together, all of us on the same rope, helping each other to the top of the mountain.” His thoughts ran to another channel. “And the girls - how can there be equality of the sexes when men and women spend their early years utterly apart? I don’t say they should all live at school together. Perhaps they shouldn’t even be taught together. But there must some other way than this one, where a boy never gets to know a woman other than his mother or his sisters until he’s fully grown, when he has no more idea of what to say to a woman - or how to be a friend to her - than if she came from the moon.” He stopped, and then went on again. “And the scholarship boys and the boys whose families don’t have money - if they forget it for a moment, they’ll be reminded. If any good comes out of these schools, it’s in the boys whose character is gold that can’t be tarnished by the petty cruelties and the arbitrary rules and the stifling of thought and natural affection in these places.” He trailed off.

“What will you do about it?” Llewelyn said, after a moment.

“Fight it as much as I can here. Start my own school someday, maybe. It’s late. You’d better go back.”

“Are you going to climb back down?” Llewelyn said.

“Yes.”

“I want to come with you.”

“No,” said Leigh. “You’re not good enough yet to make the climb. Not at night.” He added, “That’s not a challenge. Go back through the window.”

“Will you come with me?”

“No. Why should I?”

Llewelyn hesitated, and then said, “I’m afraid. I want you to come back to my room with me.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Leigh said. “And don’t lie.”

“All right,” Llewelyn said. “I’m not afraid, but I want you to come back with me anyway.”

“Why?”

“I can’t give you a reason.”

“Then I can’t come back with you.”

Llewelyn opened his mouth to argue.

“No,” Leigh said. “You go back through the window right now. To bed. Alone.” Llewelyn didn’t move. “ _Go_ ,” Leigh snapped. Llewelyn moved reluctantly. He paused with one leg over the sill. “How long are you going to stay up here?” he said.

“As long as I want to,” Leigh told him, irritably. “Stop stalling.”

Llewelyn disappeared through the window and Leigh was alone on the roof. The bad mood was back. He never liked arguing with the students, and he never liked scolding them, even though Lord knew they deserved it sometimes. Often. And he’d sat long enough that he’d started thinking again and it drained away all the joy from the night and the climb and the knowledge of a friend sitting near him. He swung himself over the edge of the roof and started back. The descent felt harder, somehow.

He wasn’t sure what Llewelyn had wanted, before he left. Of course he hadn’t been afraid. What was he, fifteen? Sixteen? Too old for that sort of thing, anyway. And what was there to be afraid of? But now Leigh was afraid, a little. Where had Llewelyn really wanted his company - on the walk back, or in the room at the end? They’d become such friends. It was only natural for it to deepen into something more, and yet somehow he hadn’t though of the possibility until tonight. And would his heart respond, if he knew that that was what Llewelyn had offered? He didn’t know which answer frightened him more. Yes, and you found yourself playing hypocrite to hide your natural affection or risk getting the sack (and he’d had such a time finding a job at all) (and he should drop a hint to Llewelyn about that other boy in the choir - there was nothing wrong about it, but people were starting to talk) and then at the end these schoolboy infatuations never lasted and you were left with a broken heart and a broken friendship. But if no - if he felt nothing more than ordinary friendship - did that mean he wasn’t capable of real, true love anymore? Were all he could manage surface passions, a passing admiration for a beautiful face? Twenty-five wasn’t too old to still feel, was it? And shouldn’t a man know himself by twenty-five? And no would leave behind broken hearts and a broken friendship too, if Llewelyn made him choose.

He wanted to Llewelyn to choose no for him, and never let him know there had been a choice.

He crossed the courtyard to his own building. The grown-up thing to do would be to go in the door and climb the stairs. He walked round to the back, where the windows of his rooms looked out on the playing fields (and damn it, he’d left the light in his rooms on all day again), and began to climb. He could have done it in pitch blackness, he knew it so well. His hand was on the sill of his sitting room window when he realized it would be closed and he couldn’t open it without falling, and he’d just have to climb back down again and go in the door. And then he realized the sill was deeper than it should have been if the window was closed, and he pulled himself into his sitting room to see Llewelyn curled up in one of his chairs below the gaslight.

“Why aren’t you in bed?” If Llewelyn noticed his chest heaving, he’d think it was only from the climb and not emotion, Leigh thought.

“I lit the gas and opened the window for you,” Llewelyn said.

There was a bare moment of relief that he _had_ remembered to turn out the gas this morning, that came and went so quick he hardly knew he felt it. He waited a moment to let exasperation cool before he spoke. “Thanks. _Why are you here?_ ”

“I wanted to see you.”

His heart was beating faster again. “Well, you’ve seen me,” he said, trying to hide the welling panic.

“Yes,” said Llewelyn, and got up out of the chair. “Good night.”

It was so unexpected he couldn’t feel relief. “Good night,” he said, thoroughly confused.

Llewelyn turned in the doorway. “I didn’t lie,” he said.

“What?” Leigh couldn’t think what he was talking about.

“I was afraid.”

Leigh looked at him, still not understanding.

“I was afraid you were going to fall.”

“I wasn’t going to fall,” Leigh said irritably, choosing to take it as a insult.

“Anyone can fall, no matter how good they are, ” Llewelyn said, interpreting his tone correctly. “You told me that. Sometimes it’s a matter of luck. It was - I was out on one of the hills this afternoon,” he began, slowly at first and then faster as if he thought Leigh might stop him before he was done. “I had a schoolbook, but I wasn’t studying. It was too wonderful a day to think. You know how you get sometimes, lying in the sun, when you’re asleep and not asleep, and you have dreams that aren’t dreams? I had one. I saw you climbing, and then I saw you fall. And then tonight up on the roof, I knew you were going to climb back down, and I was afraid I had dreamed a true dream and it meant you were going to fall. I tried to get you to let me come with you, because I thought if I was there maybe I could stop it, and you wouldn’t, and then I tried to get you to come back with me, and you wouldn’t, and then I was afraid it was like the fairy tales where they try to thwart a prophecy but it comes true no matter what they do because I couldn’t keep you from climbing down, and I came to your room to make sure you got back safe. I’ll go now. It was silly of me to have thought it was a true dream.”

“Yes. It was,” Leigh said. “Why?”

“Because it’s dark now. And when I saw you fall - it was blazing white.”


End file.
